Wayward Girls' Bride Prices

Since Jasmine kind of suggested this, today I will share how creative the men in the Wayward Girls' lives are, but I must start at the beginning.

I grew up with a group of friends who went to church and school together and also hung out. We had lots of inside jokes and sayings. We loved a movie we watched at church called Johnny Lingo. 

We quoted exchanges like this millions of times: 

Moki: Mahana, you ugly. What are you hiding up there for? Today is the day of bargaining. Come down and be ready to greet your husband to be. 

The basic premise is that when a husband (Johnny Lingo)  comes to bargain for his wife to be (Mahana) he offers to pay much more than her father (Moki) asks for his 'ugly' daughter. More quotes: 

Moki: Three cows.
Johnny Lingo: Three cows is many, but enough for Mahana. I will pay eight cows.

(Later) 

Johnny: Think what it must mean to a woman: Her future husband and her father meeting to discuss the lowest price for which she can be bought. And later, when the women of the village gather, they boast of what their husbands paid for them -- three cows, or five. How does she feel, the woman who was sold for one or two? This could not happy to my Mahana. 
Trader Harris: Johnny, I've misjudged you. I thought you were thinking of how important you would look to your friends, paying eight cows for a wife. I didn't know you wanted to make Mahana happy. 
Johnny Lingo: More than happy. I wanted her to be an eight-cow woman. 

So... when I got married, of course my
 family set a bride price for me. 

Two goats  or one goat and eight 

chickens. 

The picture on the right shows what 

my groom arrived with. He made them himself and exceeded all expectations. 

Of course we continued this practice as our own girls were married.

Here is what Jordan's groom brought:  Sheep!

And Jaime's brought donkeys

And Brooke's brought penguins and purple cows

And now Jasmine's brought ducks and kangaroos.

Good times!

Reception Entryway

I wanted a few things for the entryway at our reception. I had my bridals done about 2 weeks before the wedding and had one printed on canvas and shipped to us super fast. So I definitely wanted to put that up.

I also framed 3 pictures, one of my parents' wedding, his parents' and us! Then we included some books which we put on the tables as well. We had a lot of lace left over from the bridesmaid sashes so that was used to cover the tablecloths. Ribbon was used as a splash of brighter color.

We also had my bride price which definitely deserves a post of its own probably from my mom. And of course we had a guest book!

Heart Stamped Shirt

Last weekend was my big Valentine's Day party! Last year I dyed my own pants. This year I decided to decorate a shirt using fabric ink.

Materials:
Shirt
Stamp
Fabric Ink Pad (Mine was from Hobby Lobby, $3.99)
Cardboard

 First step, get a shirt. I picked up this beauty at Goodwill:

This shirt is 100% polyester, although the ink says it works best with natural fibers. 

As you can see, I placed cardboard in the shirt and sleeves to separate the layers. This is an important step! If you don't do it, you'll be stamping through both sides. 

I flew by the seat of my pants on this (and always, I'm wayward) and just started on the sleeve. If I were to do it again, I'd start on the back side. It went quickly and I was quite excited with the results. 

I let the shirt dry overnight and then used a hot, dry iron to "set" the stamping, as recommended on the back of the stamp pad. Then I flipped the shirt over and completed the same thing on the back side.

This is how it turned out!

This is how I wore it to the party. 

make animated gifs like this at MakeAGif

Not bad, eh? Best compliments: people didn't believe I'd done design! I had to show them my little mess ups to prove it to them. 

The possibilities are endless for shirts! I'm thinking about having a little craft night with friends to do it all over again!

Triple B chili

My husband's family has a tradition of chili and cornbread every year for Christmas Eve dinner. My mother-in-law's chili recipe is very traditional, but this year I was looking to change it up a little at our house. So I came up with the "Triple B" chili recipe:

Three Bean, Brown sugar & Bacon Chili

Because we were traveling on Christmas day, I wanted to make this chili as easy to make as possible, so a lot of the prep work is simply opening cans.

Ingredients:

• 1 lb lean ground beef (I used a can!)
• 1/2 white onion, finely chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1-15 oz can each of black beans, white beans and red beans of your choice (I used black beans, white navy beans and kidney beans)
• 1-14.5 to 15 oz can of diced tomatoes
• Salt, pepper, basil, cumin or other spices to taste
• 1/4 c brown sugar (or to taste)
• 1/2 lb bacon
• Toppings: shredded cheese, sour cream, crackers, cornbread

1. Brown the ground beef with the onion and garlic.

2. Add the beans and tomatoes. Simmer forever. Add salt, pepper and spices to taste

3. About 15 minutes before serving time, lay the bacon on a roasting pan. Sprinkle generously with brown sugar (stir remaining brown sugar to the chili. Feel free to add more for extra sweetness!). Broil the brown sugar bacon until sugar melts and bacon is crispy.

4. Chop or crumble the brown sugar bacon. Sprinkle on top of chili, and serve with other toppings.

I loved the combination of the salty crunch of bacon and sweetness of the brown sugar. It's also a great contrast in the chili itself too!

What's your favorite chili?

Grandbaby = Quilt time

About two weeks ago, I had a happy epiphany. Since Jordan is having a baby, I get to make a quilt! Somehow with all the hustle and bustle of the past few months, that had completely escaped my mind.

I made up my own patterns for 3 of the 4 quilts I have made for my grandchildren. The other pattern was from a website. I decided to try some quilt books from the library this time. I checked out one by Alex Anderson called Baby Quilts with Love. I selected several patterns and showed them to Jordan. She liked one  called Baby Crackers and asked for some yellow in it.

That sounded easy enough, but when I got to the quilt shop, I was stymied. There wasn't any tone on tone yellow. I ultimately settled on a solid yellow. Then for the prints. I was lured in by some batiks and used them to select my fabrics. I made my purchase, but something the lovely teenager (she was so nice!) said made me question my choices. "I love it when baby quilts are made from nontraditional baby fabrics."  Hmmmm. Is is baby enough???

I actually found some tone-on-tone yellow that I had used in Jordan's wedding quilt and used it in place of teh solid. I like the quilt, but I am concerned it isn't juvenile. What do you think?

I will add some borders, but this is the main part of it. I thought I would do a pieced backing with more traditional fabrics.

Update from last week. These are the cards I made for my girls. (Brooke don't look! I haven't given you yours yet.) I was in the weaving heart mood, so I needed to figure out the message. The scriptures always have the answer! "Hearts knit" as one is a theme of many verses about unity. What a great message (and it was related to the weaving!)

Tulle, Tulle, Tulle!

So I really like tulle. The skirt of my wedding dress was a whole lot of tulle. And we bought 400 yards of it...for decorating. Ok so decorating...a lot of times in the Latter-day Saint church wedding receptions are held in the church building's cultural hall and our wedding was no exception. It's big with tables and plenty of chairs. What more could you ask for? Except, well in the church building closest to us, it's not the prettiest thing in the world. I wanted to transform our cultural hall and make it a romantic and elegant setting. With heavy duty wire, Christmas light strands, tulle and some nails, we achieved exactly what I wanted.

We bought a spool of wire, a dozen light strands, 400 yards of tulle (online is far cheaper than going to Michael's or JoAnn or anywhere really) and had some nails handy. We, and by we I mean my brothers in law, strung the wire from the basketball backboard to the other one then on the sides of the wall. Then, starting from one side, we strung the tulle from wire to wire, draping it slightly. We secured some of the sections with nails if it was necessary.

Then, we hung tulle down the wall and tied it in the middle with a decorative bow with wired ribbon. Between the sections of tulle, we strung the light strands. We didn't drape those down the wall though.

We also had a couple strands of swagged Christmas lights from Brooke's wedding that we hung on one wall with Command Strips and hung tulle down the wall from an additional wire. We didn't turn on the cultural hall lights. The Christmas lights offered enough light for a romantic setting. It was completely transformed into the perfect wedding reception hall and it was beautiful!

Easy Valentine's Day Centerpiece

I picked up this ceramic vase at Goodwill last month for $3 and I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it. I got the styrofoam ball and some inexpensive fake flowers from the craft store. I cut the stems 4-5" long and arranged them on the ball. I love how it looks!

Happy Valentine's Day!